Charity Focus – HART UK
Chris Broome – Chartered Financial Planner
In January 2023, we launched our firm’s first ever corporate charitable giving programme, called ‘Project Longhurst’.
Project Longhurst enables us to direct our financial and non-monetary contributions to organisations involved in humanitarian, animal welfare, environmental and financial education causes.
We will be sharing more information about each of our chosen charities over the coming months, highlighting the amazing and courageous work each is doing to help those most in need.
Today’s article introduces our Humanitarian partner, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust – or ‘Hart’ for short.
HART is an international relief charity, founded by Baroness Cox in 2004. Their mission is to transform and save lives. During times of crisis, they provide food, water, clothes, education, medical care and shelter, standing alongside local people who are caught in the crossfire of conflict. HART is not like other relief charities. They go where others won’t.
Through this partnership, HART and Longhurst will have opportunities to provide life-saving support for local peacebuilders and humanitarian organisations in Nigeria, Syria, Burma, Sudan, South Sudan, Abyei, and the Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh.
HART reach isolated communities who are overlooked by major aid organisations, ignored by the international media and/or oppressed by their own government. They also combine aid with advocacy: in a noisy world, they amplify voices that would otherwise be unheard. One such example of their work is in Central Nigeria, where thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded in horrific terrorist attacks.
Across Central Nigeria, millions are displaced by insecurity and fear. Despite the scale and nature of the violence, it rarely hits our headlines. Neither the Nigerian Government, nor the US or UK Governments, nor any member of the European Union or African Union, nor UN relief agencies operating in Nigeria, have provided adequate humanitarian assistance to displaced people in the central belt region where HART is supporting local communities.
In 2023, with the support of Project Longhurst, HART will expand the Roads to Hope: Emergency Healthcare in Nigeria initiative to reduce the number of lives lost to militia violence. As stationary health care facilities remain under constant threat, they will provide mobile health care assistance to displaced persons through purchasing and equipping vans with life-saving medical equipment.
The medical units will travel to conflict-affected villages in Plateau state and Southern Kaduna to deliver basic emergency healthcare following an attack. Volunteer medical staff (displaced persons themselves) will clean wounds, extract metal, test for preventable illnesses such as diarrhoea and malaria, and transport severely wounded patients to hospital. Upon arrival in the villages, the medical staff will deliver a talk to the community about personal hygiene, first aid and advise mothers caring for their babies amid conflict.
Sadly, women and children are the main victims of militia attacks, with hundreds of children dying from gunshot and machete wounds each year. Community leaders repeatedly state that more people would survive attacks if there was a quick medical response, able to stop bleeding and prevent infections. HART partner, Reverend Canon Hassan John, told us: “I have personally saved many lives with only a little first aid knowledge and the first aid pouch I keep in my car.”
The Roads to Hope project will enable immediate life-saving relief following an attack and provide essential healthcare training among the community.
“As the Founding President of HART, I can hardly find adequate words to convey my gratitude to Longhurst Wealth Management for supporting our commitment to provide aid and advocacy for victims of conflict and oppression largely unreached by other aid organisations for political or security reasons. Major aid organisations can only reach people in need with the permission of a government – which they are unable to do, if a government refrains from giving permission. Or, in some cases where civilians are trapped in areas subjected to military offensives, aid organisations cannot reach them for security reasons.
However, HART supports local partners who are on location and who work with their communities to meet their urgent needs. We look forward to informing you of the positive developments you will have helped to make possible and the profound gratitude of the people whose lives you will have helped to save.”
Baroness Cox, Founder President
Next Steps
For the 2022/23 tax year we have already donated in excess of £10,000 across all our chosen causes.
Each tax year thereafter we plan to commit a minimum of the same amount again, with a hope to double it before the end of 2023/24.
To read more about Project Longhurst, please visit our dedicated website page.
For more information about HART, visit their website.
